Another Kind of Shock At the Grocery Store

I had to make a grocery store run earlier this evening. Charcoal and sugar, and walk over to the Dollar Store and see if they have any pink High liters while I'm there.

They make Charcoal about 75 miles from here. Luke, West Virginia is the home of Kingsford Charcoal. I won't buy the stuff after having seen what its done to the forrest in that part of the world, but I never bought much of it before I saw the devastation its production causes. The reason is it burns to fast. I like the cheaper stuff because it lasts longer and that gives me more latitude in cooking. So I grab a bag of the store brand and I'm standing there waiting to pay and it occurs to me that the stuff I'm buying is probably made by Kingsford anyway, just their back-door rejects or something. So I look all over the bag to see where the stuff is made.

Holy shit! China.

How in hell can they possibly make money importing charcoal? How in hell can they import charcoal and ship it half way around the world and still sell it cheaper than the same stuff made from trees that grew just two counties from where I now sit? What chance do we stand as a nation if there is nothing so basic and inexpensive that we can not make it ourselves locally. Is there nothing at all left we can make at home?

:sarcasm: :sarcasm:

:hi:

Its getting to the point where the US will only have service type jobs, and no manufacturing...we cannot survive in this world, without some manufacturing jobs....

The presses are in Taiwan. Outsourced years ago.

The US Mint prints money in Denver & Philadelphia, not in Taiwan.

I personally would like to see an audit done upon all products which are used by our government in any official capacity, and I would very much like to see laws passed which require our government to utilize American manufacturing wherever and whenever possible.

To that end- what is the supply chain for the raw materials used by the US Mint? Are there any components used in the process that are not made in the US?

If so- WHY?

For frak's sake.

Federal Reserve Notes are printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington D.C. Notes are also printed in Fort Worth, TX.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Engraving_and_Printing

I'll chip in for the freight.

scary stuff.

destroyed by the greedy bastards who run it. They are in the process of turning us all into nothing but cheap day laborers, happy for a scrap of tin to put on the side of the shack in shantytown.

I would be wary as hell burning shit made in China underneath my food, what with those lovely fumes of mercury and lead seeping into it.

The story of stuff! :hi:

...and it does bring up lots of issues as you describe.

I think that we will need to be asking questions like yours a lot more, not just we USAns, but the people of this planet generally. Certainly, one of the wonderful things about living in this day and age and the ability to travel anywhere, is that we can be exposed to other cultures and the wonderful things they offer that we don't -- think various cuisines, artifacts, etc. So I can't be totally against getting stuff from far away.

However, there are standard things that everyone everywhere uses in one form or another. And I have to agree with you, it makes little or no sense to ship these things all over the ends of the earth, and it certainly has to have an effect on the price and the carbon footprint of the product as well.

Sadly, our so-called "leaders" will not address issues like this with any imagination whatsoever; in fact they will actively block attempts to do so. Also, sadly, the ideologues who have infiltrated every corner of our government (not to mention the international organizations that enforce "modernization" with loans with strings attached) will continue to promote the idea that the only control needed is the "invisible hand" of the "free" market.

There is the carbon footprint to be sure, but there is also the capital investment and labor to deal with. I know the plant in Luke is very much automated, I doubt very much that the one in China is much more elaborate than the pits on Devil's Island or similar digs anywhere on earth for the last 25,000 years or more. There can be no question in my mind that the per-person daily output of charcoal from our plant outdoes by a wide margin anything that is being imported. No kidding, I can imagine a charcoal factory in this country having a dozen people working a shift and with the aid of mechanization can turn out a huge amount of product per day. The cost per unit has to be infinitesimally small - and yet it is being beat right before my very eyes.

What level of efficiency do we need to achieve in order to make even basic products and, as you point out, find a way to stop the insanity of shipping mundane items half way around the world to save pennies at the checkout counter. If nothing else we have to realize that what we are importing is essentially slave labor and stolen natural resources and in so doing simply increasing our debt at the same time we put our own people out of work. The situation is, in a word, unsustainable.

"If nothing else we have to realize that what we are importing is essentially slave labor and stolen natural resources and in so doing simply increasing our debt at the same time we put our own people out of work."

That pretty much sums it up.

And that imported charcoal isn't inspected or regulated like our food or medicine or even like dog food. And we all know about imported Chinese dog food.

is made in the USA.

Who would have thought?

Federal law allows companies to import the product and put "made in USA" on it if it was only packaged in the US. In fact, they can even say "made in USA" if the label or box was created in the USA and the actual packaging is done in North America (including Canada and Mexico).

ugh

They'll probably find a way to outsource that to some godforsaken place where starving people will shit for free just so you'll feed them something.


there are basically ZERO environmental regulations in China and labor costs are a few cents an hour (or free using slaves), so the fact they can clear-cut a forest (using slave labor), make charcoal (with slave labor and no regard for air pollution) and ship it here cheaper than Kingsford can from a couple counties over is no surprise. Plus, Kingsford charges the same whether you are two counties away, two states away or two time zones away.

He states that before Reagan, the U.S. was the world's #1 producer of finished goods. Today, we are the world's #1 exporter of raw materials -- as Thom calls it, that is the defination of a third world country. They dont make anything, just export stuff to countries who will make stuff.

goddamned capitalist thieves.

it is gonna get very bad for our grandkids unless something drastic happens in short order. If any of us tried to run our households the same way the federal government has been running its' accounts, we'd be locked up and the key thrown away. Everything this country does is against the way I was raised, now what happens?

to China so they could make the charcoal!

China was deforested thousands of years ago and now relies heavily on bamboo for much of its building. They don't have hardwoods available to turn into charcoal--it all has to be used for their other needs.

So your Brand X Chinese charcoal was likely shipped across the Pacific Ocean TWICE.

amazing.

Much cheaper and they stopped carrying anything from China. They're probably aren't any by you, though.

They are a great store, though.

We helped open the first TJ's in Georgia
Here is the Grand Opening...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5561565665179751904&q=trader+joes&ei=EuYhSNfqCoeorwK5_ZSzAg

There was a time that there were "general cargo" ships. Along came shipping containers and the infrastructure to support them. Cargo shipping is charged based on the type of commodity. Obviously the impetus is to book high revenue cargo. For a long time container ships were the aristocrats of ocean shipping.

Then along comes a glut of container ships. Rates plummet. Then a strange thing: suddenly it becomes feasible to ship cement in containers. So the glut of ships is kept busy. If rates go up, cargo quantities will drop precipitously because of the low rate commodity drop-off.

Because of the price of oil it is necessary to build ever larger ships. Which in turn have to be filled with cargo.

And that is why we can import charcoal from China.